In "Night Fishing" by Caitlín R. Kiernan and The Incredible Shrinking Man, screenplay by Richard Matheson, the night sky or galaxy is referred to as a tapestry. That image makes me think of an expression, the fabric of space. In graphic representations of the fabric of space, we see a two-dimensional grid, sometimes warped into a third by a representation of the spherical mass of a star or planet. So maybe we can say that there is a y-coordinate for the warp and an x-coordinate for the woof in this fabric of space, and that every point in it--every location on the tapestry--can be described using a pair of numbers. The word warp--related to the word weird--does double duty here. The word order, by the way, is related to weaving as well.
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At the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man, the hero passes through an opening in a window screen to gaze at the night sky, to peer into infinitude. The screen is a grid. It, too, has x- and y-coordinates. Passing through this manmade screen or grid or fabric, something that formerly would have blocked him, he now has unobstructed access to and an unobstructed view of the "vast majesty of creation." He has emerged from a literal underworld, the dark, nightmarish, spider-crawling cellar of his previously mundane home, into a view of the stars. All else shrinks away as he puts the things of the earth behind him and encounters the heavens. He may shrink, too, but he grows in wisdom and spiritual stature. As he says, to God, there is no zero.
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Remember that the Fates are spinners and weavers. They make the fabric of our lives. The third of the Moirai, the Greek precursors to the Roman Fata, is Atropos. Her name means "un-turnable" or "unbending." She is not to be denied. Remember that the root of the word weird, or wyrd, means "to bend." I think the opposition here means that we bend and Wyrd does not. It is her will and not ours. We bend to it. We all must dree our weird. The second of the Morai is Lachesis, the allotter. We speak of drawing lots. The words dree and draw may be related.
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The title "Night Fishing" made me think of the R.E.M. song "Nightswimming." Now I find that Caitlín R. Kiernan, an adopted Southerner, is a fan of that Southern group.
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Although Mr. Kiernan was born in Ireland, he grew up and lives in the South. I don't know whether he sees himself this way, but maybe he can be considered a Southern Gothic writer. Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers were two others with Irish names.
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) had an ambiguous name, but that's because she dropped her given name, Mary. Some of her stories have been described as horror stories, but she was a devout Catholic. In a letter, she wrote: "The stories are hard, but they are hard, because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. When I see these stories described as horror stories, I am always amused, because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror." I would like to read more. Strangely, a rock group called Killdozer, named for a story by Theodore Sturgeon, referred to her in a song called "Lupus," released in 1989. The disease that killed her refers to the appearance on the skin of rashes like wolf bites. Ghastly stigmata.
Carson McCullers (1917-1967) also had an ambiguous name, but that's because she dropped her given name, Lula. The McCullers part came from her marriage to Reeves McCullers. Her surname at birth was Smith. In contrast to Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers was ambiguous in terms of her sex. However, she was a woman, the word woman, of course, meaning woman. She said: "Writing, for me, is a search for God." Contrast that with the search among many current authors, which is evidently for the opposite of God.
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There is imagery in "Night Fishing" that could be taken as sexual: holes, pricks, boxes. There is also the imagery of the sea, which can be taken as representing the oceanic quality of woman, including in a sexual sense. I don't really think that there is a sexual purpose here, though, even if a transvestite makes his entrance--and soon his offstage exit--at the end of the story. Or if there is a sexual purpose, I don't see it as the main purpose. The main purpose seems to be to tell a story about the abysses that are or may be inside of us, especially when we go looking for them, make a home for them, and invite them in.
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In all of this thinking and writing about the void--or Void--the idea of the Ouija board has come into my head again and again. I have thought about how people using the Ouija board might be opening a door and inviting in spirits or forces that we don't want coming into our world. They have been banished for a reason.
The moveable part of the Ouija setup is the planchette. The word planchette is from an Old French word meaning "plank," originally "to be flat." Planchets are used in coin making. They are basically blanks, blank in one of its meanings signifying an empty space, or nothing. I have thought of the psychopath or serial killer as a blank, as a human-looking thing that lacks a soul and is empty inside. Not knowing what is inside of us that makes us human--believing we are mere, mechanistic material--he wants to cut us open to see what makes us tick. (His tic is to find out what makes us tick.) The narrator in "Night Fishing" is a serial killer and is empty inside. Serial killing usually has an aberrant sexual aspect to it. The narrator isn't obviously sexually aberrant, even if he recruits a transvestite into his abyssal world. Significantly, the narrator is nameless; lacking words to signify himself, he is not part of Creation but descended from the wordless and disordered void that preceded it.
The planchette used with a Ouija board has its own subtle sexual imagery. In the middle is a hole. The planchette is shaped like a heart, but turn it around and you might see a subtle representation of a woman's anatomy, woman in the only real sense of the word instead of the insane, depraved, delusional, 21st-century sense. I'll say this to close out this too-long series on "Night Fishing" by Caitlín R. Kiernan: A woman is a woman, and only a woman can be a woman.
Next: The First Sex-Switch in "The Unique Magazine"
Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley
I've read your blog for a while and enjoyed the range of Weird Lit you've covered. Your commentary on Night Fishing is just terrible and reveals far too much of your prejudices and political leaning (or, perhaps worse, ignorance). It reads far too much like the foamy-frothings of Lovecraftian character being driven to lunacy by the horror they perceive in the world around them. My understanding is that Kiernan isn't a man and you seem unable to get over that. I don't think I'll bother coming back and reading your blog any more. I prefer healthier perspectives on literature.
ReplyDeleteHi, Anonymous,
DeleteI have a very long reply to your message, so I'll have to post it in pieces.
Part One
One of the reasons that I write this blog is to become a better writer, thinker, and researcher. You write that my commentary is "terrible." Can you give me any examples? If my writing is terrible I would like to know how it's terrible so that I can make it better.
The same thing goes for my ideas and my thinking. Have I made any serious errors? In your judgment, have I seen anything the wrong way? Have I missed any important points or insights? I really would like to know, and I invite comment and criticism.
As for political leanings, I think it's clear to anybody who reads this blog what my leanings are. I have probably spent too much time on political ideas. Before I started on the current series, I was focusing on other things. I would like to get back to them, because, to tell you the truth, this isn't any fun. More on that below. In the meantime, I'll say that politics has intruded on everything. It's hard to talk about anything now without touching on politics.
TH
Part Two
DeleteUntil not very long ago, weird fiction was pretty much apolitical. Science fiction has always been more political, but even so, most of it was not political until -- when? I'm not sure. At least the 1950s or '60s. Anyway, this is another reason to stay away from new things and to write about 100-year-old stories and long-dead authors.
So it seems like weird fiction and science fiction have recently become highly politicized. The people involved in these genres are certainly highly political. In writing the current series, I found an example of that in the changing of the name of the James Tiptree Jr. Award to the Otherwise Award. That name change appears to have been partly or mostly a political decision. But then the award has probably always been political. In any case, a female author who wrote using a masculine pseudonym has had that name removed from an award established in her honor. Is this cancellation? I don't know. But it sure is ironic, and in more ways than one.
Earlier this year, I made a decision to look at the 100th anniversary issue of Weird Tales, and that's what I have been doing. Again, I'll tell you, this isn't any fun. I have committed myself to doing it, though, and so my plan is to finish before the end of the year and to begin some new-old things in 2025.
One of the reasons this isn't any fun is that the stories and the ideas and sentiments behind them are so unpleasant, some of them extremely so. I sense that readers and writers of weird fiction today are also unpleasant. In fact, the whole business of genre fiction seems to be that way, from top to bottom and from one side to the other. Why should that be? I don't know. I thought this was all supposed to be fun. But if everything is political, and politics is deadly serious, then everything eventually becomes deadly serious.
Part Three
DeleteThe tone and the implications of your comment would seem indications of that unpleasantness. I'll address one part of your comment in particular, the one that seems to be your main reason or only reason for writing: it is not ignorant to understand and state simple facts. It's actually the opposite of ignorant. If I am prejudiced, I am prejudiced in favor of fact. It is not unhealthy to deny delusions. A man cannot be a woman. A woman cannot be a man. Those are incontrovertible facts. Those are unalterable realities. To say anything different is to lie. To believe anything different is to suffer under delusion, to be ignorant of science, and to deny the unalterable realities of human existence. I don't have to get over anything because there's nothing to get over.
I don't like to hear that you won't be reading my blog any more. I would like for people to read, enjoy, and learn from what I write here. I would say, though, that you should get used to reading and hearing things that you don't like, because not everyone is always going to agree with you. It won't hurt you to hear words you don't want to hear. You're not a child any more.
As for "healthier perspectives," it's not healthy to listen to and believe in lies. If other people are telling you lies, my advice is to stay away from them. Lies are harmful. The words themselves are not harmful. It's the lie burrowing into you and what it does to you once it's inside that causes you harm.
Two more thing and then I'll go:
First, cool Lovecraftian reference. I can tell that you have read and practiced your Lovecraftian prose.
Second, you're sure going to miss out if you don't read the next installment on this blog.
Thanks for writing. If you change your mind, I'll still be here.
TH